George Will Put the Pope in His Place

It is refreshing to hear a libertarian- conservative critique of Pope Francis’s world view. Unfortunately, the Pope has become a tool for the Obama policy narrative on everything from Cuba to climate change to “income inequality.” All while muting the conventional Catholic articles of faith on abortion and marriage and morality. On these issues of which he is a late arrival, Pope Francis has the wrong answers that would puncture the hopes of millions of poor people around the world. The ever-skillful George Will eviscerates the pretentiousness of the Pontiff a world leader who should inveigh in his domain of the spirit but is really into modern marketing.

As the world spurns his church’s teachings about abortion, contraception, divorce, same-sex marriage and other matters, Francis jauntily makes his church congruent with the secular religion of “sustainability.” Because this is hostile to growth, it fits Francis’s seeming sympathy for medieval stasis, when his church ruled the roost, economic growth was essentially nonexistent and life expectancy was around 30.

Francis’s fact-free flamboyance reduces him to a shepherd whose selectively reverent flock, genuflecting only at green altars, is tiny relative to the publicity it receives from media otherwise disdainful of his church. Secular people with anti-Catholic agendas drain his prestige, a dwindling asset, into promotion of policies inimical to the most vulnerable people and unrelated to what once was the papacy’s very different salvific mission.

He stands against modernity, rationality, science and, ultimately, the spontaneous creativity of open societies in which people and their desires are not problems but precious resources. Americans cannot simultaneously honor him and celebrate their nation’s premises.

About Steve Aylward

Steve Aylward is one of the principal owners of Red Mass Group. He is the Republican State Committeeman for Second Suffolk & Middlesex, comprised of Belmont, Watertown, Brighton and Back Bay. In 2014 he was Co-Chairman of the Question 1 - the Ballot Initiative which successfully repealed automatic gas tax hikes.